DIY wedding

This Fall Maryland wedding full of warm colors is exactly what I need right now. After yesterday’s horrible events in San Fran & Alexandria … and just everything else going on in my life, it’s always good to re-focus back on L-O-V-E.

From the photographer:

Kirsten and Andrew wanted to bring a little of the outdoors to the room where they got married. They made heir own arch using trunks and filled the room with fall colored flowers and pumpkins. They also made a gorgeous wooden ‘instagram-like’ board with pictures of themselves. During the ceremony they both watered a tree that will be planted at their house and represent their deep rooted union. It was a day full of smiles, tears, laughs and some pretty awesome dance moves.

Why we chose colors – we wanted fall-ish colors that weren’t too Halloween-y. We loosely chose mustard, Marsala, and sage, although we tried not to follow that too strictly. Also copper! There is copper in his ring and my engagement and wedding rings are rose gold, so we spray painted some elements copper as well.

West Virginia might technically fall outside of my regional requirements but once I saw the images from this festival themed wedding and just the whole vibe of the day – I simply fell in love. Plus, the venue was in Shepherdstown, WV which is only about an hour and a half from Washington, DC and 30 minutes from the outer parts of Northern Virginia, so really not THAT far outside my radius. Plus, as the submitters stated, “it’s a great place to come and escape the city … and get more for your dollar”.

Jonah & Jade’s wedding is full of colors, DIY projects, festival-themed details, and SO MUCH LOVE. I’m telling you – I thought this was a styled shoot at first, it’s so gorgeous, but really it was just a total labor of love (the bride and her friends did a lot – and hired the perfect vendors to cap it all off). I know you’re going to love this one!

Jonah and I met through mutual friends at a reggae show. I remember whispering to my friend before meeting him, “Look at that tall surfer looking dude with long hair over there.” One day, my sister invited me to come along to go pontooning on the Potomac River with some friends. It was a gorgeous day out, my friends and I were playing our guitars and singing. Jonah was there and I remember him swinging from tree branches and doing these crazy cool dives in the water. I nicknamed him, “Tarzan.” Jonah lived on the Shenandoah River so that summer our friends would go on tube floats followed by cookouts at Jonah’s with music and t-ball. Many hikes, reggae shows, cookouts, and floats down the river later, Jonah asked me on a date and the rest is history.

Five years later, Jonah asked me out to dinner. Before I could get out the door, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I said yes! And the wedding planning began!

It was very special to have our wedding ceremony at the Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church, where we are both members. Jonah’s father, Randy Tremba, is the church’s minister and officiated our wedding ceremony.

We are very close to our families, so the bridal party included our brothers, sisters, their wives, husbands, and kids. The wedding ceremony had both traditional and non-traditional elements. There was live music throughout played by several of our musician friends. Than and Mary Anne Hitt opened up the ceremony with “I Can See Clearly Now” by Jimmy Cliff. My father walked me down the aisle to the sound of two mandalins and a guitar strumming “The Wedding March” by George Frederick Handel. I carried a custom hand tied bouquet designed by one of my girlfriends, Westvirjeni. It was huge and colorful, asymmetrical and adorned with pheasant feathers.

CLICK INSIDE FOR SO MUCH MORE OF THIS DREAMY, BRIGHTLY COLORED, FESTIVAL THEMED WEDDING

The beginning of the month brought the 2nd District Bliss Workshop and now we have ALL the fabulous images and details from the event! Ariel Lewis was on hand to teach attendees all about make-up: your best colors for your skin tone, how to apply a day-to-day look, and how to transform it into an evening look, and (my personal frenemy) eyebrows! The next workshop is not yet announced, but you know we’ll be sharing all the details once it is! Be on the look out here, OR sign-up for our newsletter to be the first to know. Check out all the fun these attendees had next! Happy Hump Day Romancers.

When your brother is the groom and the bride is (now) your sister-in-law, the regional requirements of your blog can be ignored. So while Drew & Kelly tied the knot up in Connecticut this past September, and technically this is a DC area blog, the details of their wedding & love story were too perfect to not share. Plus I had the absolute HONOR to serve as their officiant, and so naturally I needed to share this moment with you all. Warning, it’s next to impossible to narrow down pictures that you have such an emotional attachment to, to this one is picture heavy. Happy Thursday you guys.

We knew we wanted our family involved in everything! We decided that our wedding parties would be strictly family – Drew’s sisters and brother-in-law’s and Kelly’s brother and step-sister were all included in the wedding party. Even at the last minute Kelly’s teenage step-brothers became “flower-boys!”

While working on wedding planning it was very important to us that the ceremony fit our personalities and was meaningful to us.

Our ceremony included many family elements along the way as well! Each of our bridal party pairs walked into the ceremony holding their babies (our 4 “flower babies!”) and we recessed from the ceremony with our 8 month old to a live acoustic guitarist version of “Send Me on My Way” by the Rusted Roots!

We were married under a gazebo overlooking a small reservoir at dusk! We decided who better to ask officiate than Bree – Drew’s sister and wedding coordinator extraordinaire! She knew us and knew what we wanted so she was the perfect officiant fit. She did the most amazing job making us laugh, making us cry, and simply just making us feel comfortable!

^excuse me while I go cry again, after reading these amazingly kind words from Kelly. Love you guys. I was HONORED to be your officiant!

During the ceremony our mom’s read excerpts from two children’s books – Kelly works in early childhood so this was important to her! Drew’s mom read from “Oh the Places You’ll Go” while Kelly’s mom read from “The Velveteen Rabbit”.

^ I tried HARD not to tear up myself during the ceremony. No one wants to see the officiant crying … butttt I couldn’t help it. Everything was just so damn beuatiful, and I was SO happy, and OK, only 5 months post-partum, so let’s just blame that ;-p

We were far from traditional when planning our wedding – our men wore tangerine converse and picked out their own gray suits, our girls wore coral pumps and picked out their own gray dresses! Overall, we stuck with a gray theme with highlighting undertones of coral and gold.

READ MORE FOR THE REST OF DREW & KELLY’S CORAL & GRAY, MILL ON THE RIVER WEDDING (INCLUDING THE WEDDING VIDEO DREW EDITED HIMSELF!)

Happy Friday Romancers!! Another week has come to an end, and with it (like most weeks) I wonder where the time went and I feel like I have so much to do. I wasn’t the best at blogging this week, but I did finally make it out to an “Art Club” meet-up last night with two fantabulous DC artists/designers. It’s so inspiring to meet freelance artists that create such beautifully creative and unique pieces. Though it didn’t help my to-do list, it certainly helped my mind & soul a bit. Also my belly – because we had THE MOST DELICIOUS wine & cheese during our discussion. We are NJ/PA bound for the weekend first thing tomorrow for some family time & a baby shower! Hope you guys have a great one too! Enjoy this super sweet, vintage-inspired (with a TON of DIY details) Maryland wedding for today!

I didn’t want the wedding to be one-sided. Too often weddings tend to be about the bride, which misses the point. It’s about the marriage and the union of two people and I wanted it to be a nice balance that satisfied my husband.

We chose the venue because it was financial feasible and it worked out aesthetically. We decided on a tea ceremony – something very common in my culture – and cramped everyone in our tiny apartment, which made it ever so much more intimate.

I’m not sure I accomplished my goal but I was going for a noir bridal themed wedding. I like my designs clean cut and uncluttered. Black and white were the tones I naturally gravitated towards and red embodied cultural significance for me and my family. I designed a wedding grocery bag because weddings tend to give away useless trinkets. I wanted to give people things they could use while reminding them of our wedding.

We met at Duke University as undergraduates. We since have endured a 7-year long-distance relationship. At one point I was serving in the US Peace Corps in Samoa in the South Pacific and he was serving in Iraq in the military. We were able to skype during that year – pretty incredible technology feat.

Nowhere in my wedding did I include flowers. If you can afford them, flowers can be a great accent. With my go big or go home attitude if I wasn’t going to saturate my whole wedding with flowers I wasn’t going to include them at all. Also, like I said previously, I wanted a balanced wedding that wasn’t too feminine.

I enjoy wedding planning/ designing and as I lived far from my family, I did most of the pre-wedding work myself. I also managed to squeeze out some help from my husband, much to his protest.

I made the backdrop to the stage where the musicians played. While any bystander would have written the streamers off, those designs took three whole months to complete by myself. My brother, a concept designer from California, designed the backdrop of my dessert table – probably one of the most notable designs in the wedding.